[HN Gopher] Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier
___________________________________________________________________
Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier
Author : Osiris30
Score : 163 points
Date : 2020-08-22 13:12 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scientificamerican.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scientificamerican.com)
| kristianp wrote:
| Why does it have to be a hydrogen snowball? Because no tail was
| detected that would have indicated a dirty methane-etc snowball?
| What about an stony asteroid-like object?
| bluedays wrote:
| This is pretty cool. I am constantly looking at current events
| and thinking to myself "what if aliens were watching this?". I
| feel like it sorta puts things in perspective for me. Seeing that
| this might be a possibility is sorta thrilling.
| rendall wrote:
| "what if aliens were watching this?"
|
| There is an archetype of the Mysterious Stranger, an innocent,
| naive observer of our culture, who finds us incomprehensible
| because we are Just Terrible. We make war, pollute, enslave,
| etc, while this archetype is pure.
|
| Examples: K-Pax, Powder, Dostoyevski's The Idiot, Crocodile
| Dundee all have elements of this archetype
|
| The thing is, the only reason this archetype has any meaning to
| us is because this archetype shares our values. That character
| is always just the author, putting words in the mouth of a
| character who could not exist in reality. There is no
| Mysterious Stranger.
|
| We can expect actual aliens, ones who evolved in a different
| ecosystem, would have no opinion about what we do. Not from our
| value system anyway. Less "these poor hooman creatures actually
| kill each other, how primitive!" and more ... well, something
| more incomprehensible to us
| [deleted]
| Izkata wrote:
| > We can expect actual aliens, ones who evolved in a
| different ecosystem, would have no opinion about what we do.
| Not from our value system anyway. Less "these poor hooman
| creatures actually kill each other, how primitive!" and more
| ... well, something more incomprehensible to us
|
| TVTropes has a whole section called "Blue-and-Orange
| Morality" for this: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Ma
| in/BlueAndOrangeMor...
| atomi wrote:
| Your moral objectivity is concerning.
| twicetwice wrote:
| Did you mean relativity? It seems to me that the comment
| does imply moral relativity is true.
| rendall wrote:
| We can no more expect aliens to hold our moral values
| than we would expect bats or bees to do
| bluedays wrote:
| I don't think that's true. I could conceive of an alien
| "prime directive" like in Star Trek. So saying that it's out
| of the question is definitely not something that I believe.
| Humans, after all, are constantly observing other species.
| Why wouldn't aliens?
| taberiand wrote:
| Certainly I only watch with fascination when ant colonies
| destroy each other, I expect we appear much the same as ants
| to higher life forms.
| walleeee wrote:
| > There is no Mysterious Stranger.
|
| ... besides ourselves. It's not that we don't relate to
| anyone or anything this way; its that the relation is
| reflexive.
| rendall wrote:
| Yes! Exactly.
| tremon wrote:
| If you think this is cool, you should definitely buy the book
| this advert is about.
| pp19dd wrote:
| Further we look into the void, further we see how vast it is in
| length of time and breadth of space. And in that void we're a
| tiny speck of dust on an already tiny speck of dust. For me,
| looking at zoomable deep space telescope imagery, it's a 50/50
| proposition, either we have the only miracle of life in
| existence, or it's prolific.
|
| Deepest visible light image of 10,000 galaxies -
| https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic0406a/zoomable/
|
| NGC 1866 star cluster -
| https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1847a/zoomable/
|
| Runaway galaxy UGC 10214 with thousands of galaxies in backdrop
| - https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic0206a/zoomable/
|
| Abell 2218, a rich glaxy cluster composed of thousands of
| galaxies -
| https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic0814a/zoomable/
|
| Gordo ("The Fat One") - enormous galaxy cluster with mass of
| three million billion Suns -
| https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1802a/zoomable/
|
| Gallery of more of these at
| https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/archive/zoomable/ -
| follow a delightful thumbnail, then desperately seek the tiny
| buried zoomable links on subsequent pages.
| perl4ever wrote:
| >it's a 50/50 proposition, either we have the only miracle of
| life in existence, or it's prolific.
|
| This seems like a false dichotomy. There could be 200 billion
| planets with life in the universe...but only about one per
| galaxy. Someone did a probabilistic analysis of the Drake
| equation, and found out that indeed, given the known facts
| (that we don't see any life yet, how life appears to have
| developed on earth) that a substantial likelihood exists that
| the density of life is right in the range where there are
| many instances but we will never see one. It's sad to never
| get closure, but it's irrational to deny it's a possibility.
| zaroth wrote:
| The incomprehensible vastness in terms both time and space,
| combined with our own flittering existence, mean that even a
| universe utterly teeming with life would never see two
| advanced civilizations actually cross paths.
| eeegnu wrote:
| Von Neumann self replicating probes would make contact
| between two very distant civilisations eventually happen.
| Though that may occur after both civilisations are gone and
| all that remains are the programmed probes creating relay
| stations to send out more of themselves.
| emteycz wrote:
| Could you elaborate? To me that seems tobe too
| anthropocentric thinking.
| api wrote:
| All thinking about aliens is anthropocentric. We have a
| sample size of one.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Read the last sentence of the article. Bias warps perception.
| This shouldn't even be posted here.
| teh_klev wrote:
| > This shouldn't even be posted here.
|
| From the HN Guidelines:
|
| _" anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Also don't judge a book by its title. Until you've read the
| book then you can't comment on whether there's a bias in play.
| gus_massa wrote:
| The same guy has published the idea of the solar sail in a
| paper (or preprint?). Solar sails are his research topic.
|
| The calculations that a solar sail can survive an
| interstellar travel are probably ok.
|
| The evidence that the solar sail is the most likely
| explanation is very weak.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| >Asked if there is a clear leading candidate explanation for
| 'Oumuamua's acceleration, Loeb referred Live Science to a not-
| yet-released book he authored called "Extraterrestrial: The
| First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth," due for
| publication in January.
|
| I don't understand - is it unexpected that the person forming
| an argument for the alien hypothesis has written a book about
| it? That's not usually what people mean when they say "bias",
| and it's even further from being a good reason that the entire
| article "shouldn't be posted here". Or are you just making the
| assumption that the book's dumb "clickbaity" title must mean
| the author is full of shit?
| datameta wrote:
| It seems obvious to me that if one intends to make money from
| a theory it is in their best interest to champion said theory
| even in the face of conflicting research and alternate
| explanations.
| aetherson wrote:
| The profession of research scientist is the profession of
| making money from theories.
| weego wrote:
| At least until the book is out
| czzr wrote:
| Summary: hydrogen iceberg theory questioned as the expected
| lifespan of a hydrogen iceberg is likely too short, given the
| distance Oumuamua would have had to travel.
| waynecochran wrote:
| You forgot about the aliens.
| rosstex wrote:
| You have failed to account for the fact that we live in a
| simulation.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Background sprite object and a physics engine bug, can I
| haz noble prize now?
| throwaw4y-plate wrote:
| You stop that, no fun allowed!
| TriNetra wrote:
| Or, we're just a projection in a dream of the all-pervading
| cosmic consciousness.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| It's either aliens, or our estimations of hydrogen iceberg
| ages is a little off.
| elorant wrote:
| Previous discussion:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24204323
| lowdose wrote:
| To start playing aliens throw us a snowball. What would have
| happend when Oumuamua would hit our planet?
| extropy wrote:
| If it was composed of solid hydrogen then very little. It would
| evaporate at slightest touch of a planets atmosphere. Maybe
| even bounce off it.
|
| For solid hydrogen any planet with atmosphere is like a ball of
| hot molten lava for a snowball.
|
| Edit: I was half expecting there to be a video of throwing
| snowballs into lava, Internet does not have it all, yet.
| salawat wrote:
| Sounds like something to add to the bucket list.
| historyremade wrote:
| When the US Gov Officially released a video, why hath talk about
| Oumua?
| person_of_color wrote:
| I don't get it. Why don't we image this thing directly?
| dboreham wrote:
| It gone.
| craigching wrote:
| We have! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/`Oumuamua
|
| But it's small and moving away from us fast. We couldn't build
| anything in time that could catch up to it and image it closer.
| jacobush wrote:
| Politically no. When we first saw it, technically maybe yes.
| In an all stops pulled scenario, an improvised rocket could
| have been sent and at last had a fly-by look.
|
| Now... doubtful it could be done at all.
| avian wrote:
| > We couldn't build anything
|
| We could, but we didn't.
|
| https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.03155
| person_of_color wrote:
| Interesting.
|
| The trajectory of O'uamuamua seems almost.. designed to scout
| the Sun's habitable zone.
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f5/Ou.
| ..
| Sharlin wrote:
| Uh, because of the most obvious reason that comes to mind: it's
| way too small and way too far away! Even when it was
| discovered, near the perihelion of its hyberbolic orbit, it was
| small enough that we had no way whatsoever actually resolving
| it as anything else than a point of light. We could only
| guesstimate its rough shape by measuring its light curve--how
| its brightness changes as it rotates--and then simulating what
| kind of shape would produce that light curve. And now it's
| already way beyond Saturn's orbit, almost 100 times farther
| away than when it was discovered.
| api wrote:
| Could the JWST see it? It goes up soon.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Lol
|
| Soon
| jcims wrote:
| Will that be the most valuable asset put in space on one
| lunch? Aside from stuff we don't know about of course?
| xchaotic wrote:
| Obligatory joke about putting IP lawyers in high orbit
| first.
| twirlip wrote:
| For a broad value of soon.
| henriquemaia wrote:
| I follow the _What da Math_ [0] channel on YouTube to keep up
| with the latest news on cosmology. I highly recommend it. Very
| thorough and with daily updates.
|
| [0] https://youtube.com/user/whatdamath
| ReptileMan wrote:
| And on far-off Earth, Dr. Carlisle Perera had as yet told no one
| how he had wakened from a restless sleep with the message from
| his subconscious still echoing in his brain: The Ramans do
| everything in threes.
|
| We just have to hope there is at least one more
| sandworm101 wrote:
| If we put half the energy we use up arguing about Oumuamua into
| detecting more interstellar objects we would have the data to end
| this debate.
|
| I'm a fan of the pragmatic mathematical approach. This was the
| first thing detected. The chances that the first result is also
| any sort of outlier are very slim. Detect and track some more of
| these objects. I'd bet good money that Oumuamua's motion is very
| explainable once we get some better data from other, similar,
| objects.
| throwaway2019V wrote:
| Just like we're the only form of life that we've observed in
| the universe. The chances that the first result is also any
| sort of outlier are very slim. That's why with the decades of
| effort and sophisticated tools that we've employed, we've been
| able to find and study lifeforms on so many other planets.
| gfodor wrote:
| If we put half the energy we use detecting more interstellar
| objects to building interstellar spacecraft we'd be able to fly
| to one to find out what it is.
|
| If we put half the energy we use building interstellar
| spacecraft on neural implants we'd not worry about flying
| somewhere else to satiate our desires.
|
| If we put half the energy we use working on neural implants on
| creating affordable housing and food production we wouldn't
| have people chasing after dreams of perceptual bliss.
|
| If we put half the energy we put into affordable housing and
| food production into figuring out what Oumuamua was, we'd
| discover aliens and they'd solve all our problems.
| vkou wrote:
| I don't think a few hundred million dollars a year is going
| to solve food production or affordable housing.
| [deleted]
| spenczar5 wrote:
| Uh, the highest-funded terrestrial telescope project of the
| last 10 years has been the Rubin Observatory, which is intended
| to detect more interstellar objects (along with two other large
| goals - variability studies and galactic rotation curve studies
| to understand dark energy).
|
| The effort spent arguing about Oumuamua is a tiny,
| _microscopic_ fraction of grant money in astronomy.
|
| (I work on software to detect interstellar objects)
| themgt wrote:
| > If we put half the energy we use up arguing about Oumuamua
| into detecting more interstellar objects we would have the data
| to end this debate
|
| This HN comment was just the motivation I needed to get off my
| computer and rededicate myself to polishing eighteen 1.32m
| gold-plated beryllium hexagonal mirror segments.
| coolspot wrote:
| I know you are joking, but a second interstellar object after
| the Oumuamua was discovered using a 0.65m DIY telescope built
| by Gennadiy Borisov.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2I/Borisov
| Nicksil wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2I/Borisov
| ddingus wrote:
| What is used, and how long does doing that take?
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| I think it was sarcasm.
| duck2 wrote:
| Still interesting what would be used to polish a gold
| plated beryllium mirror. For instance, looks like they
| clean it by spraying CO2 snow:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_cleaning
| petschge wrote:
| Be very careful grinding, polishing or otherwise ablating
| any alloy that contains beryllium. Berylliosis (no matter
| if acute or cronic) is no joke.
| ddingus wrote:
| Yeah, I took a gamble.
|
| Just looked at the reference you dropped. Thanks, that is
| an interesting little rabbit hole.
| marcusverus wrote:
| Given a budget of, say, $9.66 Billion, I'd say it would
| take around 25 years.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope
| sandworm101 wrote:
| You don't need the telescope. There is an effort to discover
| interstellar objects in old data, which is largely a matter
| of spotting faint objects and calculating thier orbits...ie
| coding.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Can you link us to where we can contribute?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| https://panstarrs.stsci.edu/
|
| The data is there. Have at it.
| eternalban wrote:
| Perfect task for AI.
| pc86 wrote:
| Given this comment, I'm not sure you know what "AI" _or_
| "perfect" mean.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Why would this not be a good domain for image
| recognition?
| doytch wrote:
| If you're trying to classify images as whether or not
| they contain something, you need a bunch of images that
| you already know don't contain the thing (got it), and a
| bunch of images that you already know /do/ contain the
| thing. We lack the latter, so there's nothing for the
| algorithm to learn based on.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Oh I see I assumed the GP was talking about after such a
| dataset I agree you likely couldn't bootstrap without a
| lot of data but couldn't you use more classic approaches
| to extract data and then train a model (obviously once
| you know the extraction process is fool proof?)
| microtherion wrote:
| But this is not the only way you can deploy machine
| learning techniques. You could deploy unsupervised
| learning to first learn what visual features are common
| in such images, and then successively refine until you
| end up with a set of images containing very rare
| phenomena. That could give human evaluators then a
| considerable head start.
|
| In fact, this idea seems so obvious that it must have
| been tried already...
| eternalban wrote:
| Thank you for sharing that. Are you sure you know what
| "not sure" means?
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| You know what, maybe if we put this data on the
| blockchain, the ICO can pay for future investment to
| democratize astronomical research ok, I can't keep typing
| this out, I can't tell if I'm making myself laugh or cry.
| spenczar5 wrote:
| Another place: you could get in touch with the folks at
| ALeRCE (http://alerce.science/). They publish access to a
| live stream of data from the ZTF project. We found the
| closest asteroid ever 4 days ago from the ZTF data
| stream: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/ztf-finds-
| closest-known-a...
| _def wrote:
| I'm currently watching the Alien movies. Maybe it's better that
| we are "alone" haha
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Alien 3 is an underrated, much maligned, masterpiece.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| We all need some more excitement in life, this unexpected piece
| of rock provides exactly that
| sulam wrote:
| The subhead is "Aliens? Or a chunk of solid hydrogen? Which idea
| makes less sense?"
|
| The better version would be: "Journalism? Or Clickbait? Which
| idea makes less sense?"
|
| "Scientific American" indeed.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| I think it's extremely low density collection of dust particles
| held together by electrostatic forces. AKA a cosmic dust bunny.
| kentonv wrote:
| My pet theory (which is not intended to be taken too seriously)
| is that it is indeed a discarded light sail, and that light sail
| in particular was used to transport a Von Neumann probe which
| detached at some point after the object entered our solar system
| but before we first observed it. This detachment, in addition to
| leaving the sail tumbling, would have changed its trajectory,
| meaning our estimation of which direction the object originally
| came from is incorrect. In any case, the probe is now busy
| replicating, perhaps on the surface of Mercury. In a few years an
| army of robots will launch from there and invade the rest of the
| solar system!
|
| Realistically, though, it's too much of a coincidence that such a
| probe would first arrive so soon after we gained the ability to
| conceive of it.
| monkeypizza wrote:
| Excellent page discussing the physics of colonizing mercury:
| https://einstein-schrodinger.com/mercury_colony.html
|
| "Colonization of Mercury appears to be a very real and
| practical possibility, whereas colonization of Mars or the
| other planets, moons or asteroids is really more in the realm
| of fantasy."
|
| A big advantage of Mercury over mars is higher light intensity:
| "One very important advantage is the high solar light
| intensity, which is stronger than on Earth by a factor of 10.6
| at perihelion and 4.6 at aphelion"
| jrussino wrote:
| Cool! Personally, I like the idea of building a Dyson swarm
| out of it (sorry Mercury!)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP44EPBMb8A
| Florin_Andrei wrote:
| > _it 's too much of a coincidence that such a probe would
| first arrive so soon after we gained the ability to conceive of
| it_
|
| We've gained the ability to conceive of complex stuff only some
| thousands of years ago. Everything is "too soon" on that scale.
| burtonator wrote:
| > Realistically, though, it's too much of a coincidence that
| such a probe would first arrive so soon after we gained the
| ability to conceive of it.
|
| It is based on TIME but our conception of it would be
| independent.
|
| I think a lot of what's part of the drake equation is merited
| on overlap. It's entirely possible that other civilizations
| have been created and died out LONG before mammals even
| evolved.
|
| IF you factor in just the last 200 years of human technological
| advancement it's plausible in another 200 we will have either
| destroyed ourselves or evolved into gods.
|
| Either way we're not going to be talking to anyone in the
| universe.
|
| I think it's plausible that a god would not want to talk to
| another intelligent civilization. Why would we? We would be to
| a god what bacteria is to us.
|
| I don't really have a conversation with the bacteria infecting
| a wound. I just take antibiotics.
| licebmi__at__ wrote:
| I don't really understand what this "evolving into godhood"
| means, but I would really like to talk with the bacteria if I
| could, even if I might still take antibiotics after talking
| to it.
| kbenson wrote:
| > I think it's plausible that a god would not want to talk to
| another intelligent civilization. Why would we? We would be
| to a god what bacteria is to us.
|
| At that level of abstraction it might make more sense to
| think of humanity itself as an organism, and to their point
| of view an infant one. At the point we either either birth an
| AI or elevate people to digital organisms with vastly greater
| intelligence, then we've "matured".
|
| There's still reasons for adults to talk to or help
| adolescents, mainly to help them mature well, so there might
| be reasons for "gods" to talk to us.
|
| It might also be that we're only at the stage of speaking
| gibberish, so there's still a bit to wait.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| > I think it's plausible that a god would not want to talk to
| another intelligent civilization. Why would we? We would be
| to a god what bacteria is to us.
|
| That may be because we can't even perceive bacteria, but if
| we go a little bit bigger and you could have a conversation
| with a dog, cat, deer, or any other animal, I bet you would.
| I know I personally would just to understand how those
| animals think and the differences between them and us.
|
| With that said, I do agree with you, but I don't think this
| is really a comparable analogy though because I'm sure a god
| wouldn't want to converse with us due to boredom of
| interacting with plenty of other intelligent life and pretty
| much everything else before reaching us.
| bserge wrote:
| > I don't really have a conversation with the bacteria
| infecting a wound
|
| Could it be because you know they won't reply? That's the
| case with most animals. Talking to a random dog or cat
| (relatively intelligent creatures) and knowing they don't
| understand a thing you say just kind of makes it pointless.
| Of course they'll understand simple universal body actions
| and react, but nothing more.
|
| If there was a bacteria or a cat who would reply back, or at
| the very least clearly understand what I'm saying, I'd be
| happy and amazed, and definitely would want to continue
| talking to them.
| elboru wrote:
| What if an AGI's intelligence has exploded to a point where
| human intelligence is insignificant?
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| > Realistically, though, it's too much of a coincidence that
| such a probe would first arrive so soon after we gained the
| ability to conceive of it.
|
| Are you sure it's a coincidence? Imagine you are an
| intergalactic species that advances yourself by invading other
| worlds and stealing the inhabitants' knowledge and technology.
| What would be the best time to invade? I would suggest waiting
| as long as possible in their technological advancement but just
| before they develop the ability to defend themselves.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Would a species that has mastered intergalactic travel really
| have anything to learn from us? I think they would either
| kill us, eat us, enslave us, or maybe all of the above.
| kentonv wrote:
| Light sails are not very fast. The probe would have had to
| have been launched thousands of years ago at least, maybe
| millions. Either way, long before our current level of
| advancement could have been predicted.
| jimhefferon wrote:
| > it's too much of a coincidence that such a probe would first
| arrive so soon after we gained the ability to conceive of it.
|
| Perhaps they observed _I Love Lucy_ and _Gilligan_ and came by
| to complain about spectrum pollution.
| kentonv wrote:
| I don't think so. Light sails are not fast. It would have
| taken the probe millions of years to get here.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| Mercury provides solar power but you need a lot more energy to
| get from there to earth. The asteroid belt still provides
| adequate solar power with I'd guess an easier ability to 'fall
| on the earth'. It wasn't clear whether the goal of your invader
| was destruction or takeover. Falling rocks would do the
| destruction job.
| kentonv wrote:
| Maybe, but the trajectory of the object seems more consistent
| with having dropped someone off at Mercury, not the asteroid
| belt.
| rriepe wrote:
| The point is obviously more probes. I think a sufficient
| gravity field and planetary mass is going to let you work a
| lot faster. Robotic probes with basically no atmosphere to
| get through means you can use kinetic cannons to get off-
| world.
|
| Your initial "factory line" would be a mostly underground
| equatorial band on Mercury.
| jameshart wrote:
| Which forces the logical conclusion that this isn't the first
| such probe, obviously.
| kentonv wrote:
| That could only be true if they are intentionally hiding from
| us, rather than replicating and harvesting the solar system
| as fast as they can. But personally I have a hard time
| believing that hyper-intelligent devices would care about
| avoiding detection by lowly biological organisms like us.
| badrabbit wrote:
| They?
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| _She_
| tgflynn wrote:
| Speculating about the motives of a species that may or may
| not be biologically similar to us and which, even if they
| are similar, may well be millions of years more advanced
| than us is very hazardous. I think these kinds of
| speculations lead many people to hold all sorts of strongly
| held but unfounded beliefs about what ET's may or may not
| do here.
|
| Maybe after another million years of development a species'
| main motivation would be simple curiosity, in other words
| they are basically scientists. Scientists may want to avoid
| interfering with a species they are studying and therefore
| remain hidden. But then the same scientists conducting a
| different experiment may want to selectively perturb the
| specimen's environment to probe their psychological
| reactions and degree of intellectual development.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| https://arxiv.org/abs/1302.0606 MAD with Aliens?
| Interstellar deterrence and its implications
| tgflynn wrote:
| Just from reading the abstract that looks extremely
| speculative. Frankly you might as well try to make
| inferences about human behavior by studying aggression in
| bees.
| StantheBrain wrote:
| Exactly, the classic Terran (of the norm), functions
| mainly with the help of cognitive biases and other
| syndromes preventing him, by social cohesion, to admit
| other tunnels of reality than those that composed their
| groups (majority currently) It's a pity, with a brain so
| powerful, if you knew what you could understand,
| admitting to omit the permanent self-awareness.
|
| Exactement, le terrien classique (de la norme),
| fonctionne principalement a l'aide de biais cognitifs et
| autres syndromes l'empechant, par cohesion social, a
| admettre d'autre tunnel de realite que ceux qui ont
| compose leurs groupe (majoritaire actuellement) C'est
| dommage, avec un cerveau si puissant, si vous saviez ce
| que l'on peux comprendre, en admettant d'omettre la
| permanente conscience de soi.
| adventured wrote:
| Those are not the only two options.
|
| Besides, we still routinely fail to spot asteroids until
| they get close to Earth or pass by.
|
| There may be more dwarf planets like Pluto, or a major
| planet the size of Neptune (per Caltech researchers, so
| called Planet Nine or Planet X) in our own solar system and
| we can't easily find them.
|
| No need to intentionally hide from the primitive humans
| that are still struggling to locate large objects in their
| solar system and near their planet.
| kentonv wrote:
| The existence of other planets doesn't seem to explain
| why they wouldn't colonize Earth. I would expect them to
| go everywhere.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| What would the point of going everywhere be?
| kentonv wrote:
| To harvest all available resources in the service of
| whatever higher goal the civilization has.
| [deleted]
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| If the mission of the probe is exploration then it doesn't
| need to consume all of the resources of a solar system. It
| just needs enough to make a few copies to reach the nearest
| handful of stars. If they are using light sails as
| propulsion they probably need barely anything. I don't have
| a hard time believing that an advanced civilization would
| choose hiding as the default method of exploration.
| Anything from the dark forest to the prime directive could
| be used as an argument to do so. I agree with the other
| comments that it's fairly likely that our system has had
| multiple probes pass through. The unlikely event will be
| when one decides to contact us.
| kentonv wrote:
| While it's entirely possible they'd have a good reason to
| be stealthy, I don't think it's likely to be anything
| we've thought of.
|
| The Prime Directive is a mushy human emotional idea, not
| something that makes any logical sense for a space-faring
| civilization to follow. If there's any competition out
| there among space-faring civilizations, none of them are
| going to tie their hands behind their backs by refusing
| to touch planets that have native life on them.
|
| And under the Dark Forest, the best way to survive would
| be to replicate as fast as possible, consuming all
| available resources. They would want to hide from
| external, more-powerful civilizations, but they'd have no
| reason at all to hide from _us_. Hiding from us would be
| a strict loss for them, as it means they can 't mine
| Earth for resources.
| KozmoNau7 wrote:
| No, they're currently terraforming Earth1 to have a CO2
| level that is better for their metabolisms.
|
| 1 through influencing politicians and the rich and
| powerful to keep poisoning the Earth with extreme
| pollution.
| wffurr wrote:
| The politicians and rich and powerful _are_ the aliens.
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.indiewire.com/2014/10/jo
| hn-...
| akamoonknight wrote:
| Regarding the prime directive as a mushy human emotional
| idea. I don't think it's unreasonable for some advanced
| society to see preservation of newly encountered life as
| a worthy goal even as a selfish motive. How many new
| ideas and ways that nature solves problems are we still
| learning just from the life on earth?
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| I'm not sure that reasoning holds up. There's no reason
| to believe that "mushy human emotional ideas" are not the
| norm. There's no data to support that claim since
| humanity is the only example we have of intelligence. So
| for the sake of the argument I'm going to define alien
| intelligence as similar to human intelligence. I'd also
| inquire what the point of having a Von Neumann probe
| consume all of a system would be? It's not practical to
| ship the resources anywhere at sub light speed. There's a
| limit on the number of probes it would be rational to
| make in any one system even if you were going for high
| redundancy. Even use as a weapon would be foolish since
| there's a good chance something could go wrong and you'd
| wind up killing your own systems. Maybe if you were
| paving the way for a colony but even then you'd only
| build what you needed to avoid having to constantly
| maintain the structures until they were useful. The only
| way I see an exploitive strategy working is if you have
| FTL travel and if you have that then Von Neumann probes
| are useless old technology since you would just send a
| fleet of ships with what you need to get started rather
| than trying to bootstrap from a single self replicating
| probe.
| kentonv wrote:
| Once a civilization is capable of building Von Neumann
| probes, it would be silly for them not to do so. They are
| basically free, since they are self-replicating. Of
| course a civilization is going to want to control and
| harness as many resources as it possibly can. We may not
| be able to imagine what they'd want to build out of whole
| star systems, but I absolutely don't believe that
| civilization will ever run out of things to build.
|
| If there's any competition between civilizations, then
| it's even more obvious that each one will be racing to
| claim any star system that isn't already claimed. But
| even with no competition, it makes sense to spread
| rapidly.
|
| If you don't find that intuitively obvious, consider
| this: In 4.5 billion years, the Milky Way will collide
| with Andromeda. This presents us with a literal galactic-
| scale single-turn prisoner's dilemma: If intelligent life
| exists in Andromeda, they may already be preparing to
| conquer the Milky Way. If they are, and we don't prepare
| to fight back, they will obviously win. We won't have any
| ability to communicate with Andromeda to find out their
| intentions until it's too late. The earlier we start
| preparing, the more likely we are to survive.
|
| So if I were a spacefaring civilization in the Milky Way
| today, I'd be doing everything I could to mobilize every
| star system in the galaxy in preparation to beat
| Andromeda. There's just no reason not to...
| landryraccoon wrote:
| That's self destructive behavior on a planetary scale. No
| species that has an instinct or culture to consume all
| available resources will survive long enough to do it on
| a galactic scale.
|
| Also, the math doesn't work out in the sense that if a
| species that had this instinct reached interstellar
| travel a million years ago the Milky Way galaxy would
| already have entirely been consumed. That's the Fermi
| Paradox in a nutshell.
|
| If the species you are describing exists, they must have
| just started eating the galaxy, because the galaxy would
| already be eaten in an blink of an eye on the cosmic
| timeline.
|
| Lets suppose that it takes a ten thousand years to reach
| a star system and consume it, and the swarm needs the
| resources of an entire star system just to build 2 more
| probes.
|
| That means that the number of star systems consumed
| doubles every ten thousand years. At that rate it takes
| no more than 50 generations, or half a million years, to
| consume the entire galaxy.
|
| Note that if the number of probes the Von Neumann swarm
| builds is more than 2 per star system consumed, this
| process happens even faster.
| kentonv wrote:
| Right, this is why I don't actually think the object is a
| probe: if there is no competition, then a million years
| from now, we can expect Earth-originating technology will
| have spread across the galaxy. To imagine that another
| civilization exists but is no more than a million years
| ahead of us seems like too much of a coincidence.
| pavlov wrote:
| "Of course a civilization is going to want to control and
| harness as many resources as it possibly can."
|
| This may be an entirely human-centric assumption. Maybe
| there are a million civilizations out there living in
| balance with their local planetary environments, entirely
| without the expansionist curiosity and destructive drive
| that leads humans to seriously contemplate things like
| von Neumann probes?
| ithkuil wrote:
| Andromeda has 3-4 more stars than the milky way; we
| already lost, should we flee instead?
| kentonv wrote:
| The odds favor Andromeda, yes. But depending on just how
| rare intelligent life is, there is some possibility that
| we have a lucky head start.
|
| As for fleeing: The whole concept of "fleeing" assumes a
| civilization composed of discrete beings that are
| expensive to reproduce but can be feasibly transported.
| The idea of Von Neumann probes is based on a different
| assumption. The probe itself is very small, maybe only a
| few pounds, but is designed to expand using the resources
| at its destination. There probably aren't discrete beings
| -- computers can freely exchange "memories" over networks
| which makes them effectively all one big hive mind. The
| hive mind directly controls everything it builds.
| Eventually the entire star system -- perhaps the entire
| galaxy or universe -- becomes effectively one giant
| intelligent being as all available resources are
| assimilated.
|
| This civilization would certainly send probes to
| neighboring galaxies if it has the ability to, but it
| makes no sense to think about transporting the
| "inhabitants" (if you can even call them that) of one
| star system to another en masse.
| svieira wrote:
| You should really read The Count to the Eschaton Sequence
| by John C. Wright. _The Cold Equations_ is another answer
| to the question you pose.
| landryraccoon wrote:
| Consuming all available resources and destroying all
| competing life doesn't make sense even for us as the
| dominant species of a single planet.
|
| What's the evidence that wholesale environmental
| destruction is a good idea on a galactic scale if it's
| already known to be a terrible idea on a planetary scale?
| nafey wrote:
| What you are missing is that technological advancement
| can accelerate exponentially. Couple this fact nothing
| can move faster than light. This means if you don't stamp
| out alien life as soon as you encounter it then the next
| time you come back they might already have achieved
| technological parity with you. And they might not be as
| forgiving as you are. This means you have to hide and you
| have to exterminate any alien life that knowns about your
| existence. I do think if oumuamua was an alien probe then
| we should be gravely concerned.
| coredog64 wrote:
| What resources does Earth have that wouldn't be more
| plentiful elsewhere? Minerals are cheaper to extract from
| asteroids (no gravity well). If I have the ability to
| cross interstellar space, then I can't imagine that water
| is even worth that much.
| 14 wrote:
| In case there are some younger non Trekkies not sure what
| the Prime Directive
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive
| rriepe wrote:
| (We are)
| Kye wrote:
| This is clearly a visitor from Bajor.
|
| https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Bajoran_lightship
| novalis78 wrote:
| Speaking of pet theories, here is mine: There exists a sentry
| system of interstellar buoys that get sucked into star systems
| passing by. Perhaps with a solar sail, so they can control a
| bit which stars they want to take a closer look at. Our solar
| system become "recently" a candidate for obvious reasons. The
| probe made its analysis and plotted a fast escape, sending a
| tight laser beam to the next closest relay station. A fleet of
| planet biosphere erasing machine intelligence dispatch is on
| its way. Probably some ancient left over from AIGs engaged in
| eternal warfare. Hence a dead silent galaxy, a rather dark
| forest.
| gratalis wrote:
| Or, in other words, the main plot line in the Inhibitor
| trilogy within the Revelation Space series by acclaimed sci-
| fi author and astrophysicist Alastair Reynolds.
| https://www.goodreads.com/series/56392-revelation-space
| novalis78 wrote:
| Ha! Thanks for the reading tip. I was unaware.
| knob wrote:
| That reminds me of the books We Are Legion, We Are Bob.
|
| I really enjoyed those!
| bengale wrote:
| Book 4 is on preorder now, drops in September.
| ssrs wrote:
| 2020. 'nuff said.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Can't we build a probe that can reach it? What's the fastest we
| can launch a ton of equipment in Oumuamua's direction?
| aetherson wrote:
| No, it's long gone.
| rbanffy wrote:
| It's currently traveling at about half the speed of New
| Horizons, but on a highly inclined plane. The delta-v from
| Earth seems to be around 60 km/s.
| tempsolution wrote:
| Really? They are so hellbent on proving alien life that they take
| anything huh... And that from a Harvard professor. Great.
|
| So what do we have here. Some cigar shaped object, rotating
| around its own axis and accelerating somehow. I know, this must
| be an "advanced" alien space ship.
|
| Or it could be just some debris from a collision from god knows
| where. And that crap is now heating up while approaching our
| solar system and you know, frozen stuff starts to evaporate and
| accelerating this object.
|
| I still find it fascinating how even professors who should know
| better, just pull these crazy ideas out of their hat. Usually the
| simple explanation is the right one, and given that humans have
| no visibility into space whatsoever, it is kinda interesting to
| come up with theories like that. They have no clue where this
| thing came from, but make grand assumptions about how it must
| have behaved in the past.
| jcims wrote:
| I feel we'll be visiting it in a couple hundred years.
| novalis78 wrote:
| 2020 isn't quite over yet
| ekimekim wrote:
| > Asked if there is a clear leading candidate explanation for
| 'Oumuamua's acceleration, Loeb referred Live Science to a not-
| yet-released book he authored called "Extraterrestrial: The First
| Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth," due for publication in
| January.
|
| I don't know enough about the science to have an informed
| opinion, but it seems to me that if the main skeptic is also
| selling a book based in their exciting alternate theory, that's
| kinda a huge red flag.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| First sign? The first was probably the irrigation canals
| spotted on mars. Then repeating radio signals. The face on
| mars. Tabby's star. Each had their day as the first _sign_. The
| first real detection won 't be some slight variance that we
| debate for years but solid evidence. If Oumuamua was a
| triangle, that would be solid evidence. It isn't aliens until
| it is.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Well, even a 'giant triangle' may still not be enough...
| There is a giant hexagon on Saturn, after all.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn%27s_hexagon
| Izkata wrote:
| Down in the explanations, a triangle:
|
| > Similar regular shapes were created in the laboratory
| when a circular tank of liquid was rotated at different
| speeds at its centre and periphery. The most common shape
| was six sided, but shapes with three to eight sides were
| also produced.
| mcculley wrote:
| Natural processes can make lots of structures that look
| artificial. See Giant's Causeway:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant%27s_Causeway
| craigsmansion wrote:
| "It [the giant hexagon] rotates with a period of 10h 39m
| 24s, the same period as Saturn's radio emissions from its
| interior."
|
| Interesting. Thanks for posting.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| > The first real detection won't be some slight variance that
| we debate for years but solid evidence.
|
| Don't count on this. It could well be some ambiguous anomaly
| in the atmospheric spectrum of an exoplanet that we only
| decide is real after years of alternate hypotheses.
| pc86 wrote:
| The face with a mountain with coincidental lighting.
| Everything else has very plausible natural explanations as
| well.
|
| You're hearing footsteps and hoping for zebras when it's
| probably horses.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Human neurology is optimized to see and recognize faces, so
| of course anything facelike will look like a face. Faces in
| clouds, faces in the uneven paint on drywall, the Man In
| The Moon.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I'm beginning to suspect human culture is optimised to
| see aliens, so anything potentially alien-like will be
| labelled "aliens."
|
| Real aliens stand a good chance of being unimaginably,
| perhaps even invisibly, alien.
|
| What are the odds that in a galaxy that is billions of
| years old, first contact will be an encounter with a
| contemporary-ish technology straight out of a 20th
| century science fiction novel?
| cpuguy83 wrote:
| Evidence can be solid as can be, but it will still be
| debated, made political, etc.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| With this approach, you'd be skeptical too if Charles Darwin
| was also selling a book with his exciting alternate theory on
| the origin of species.
| davrosthedalek wrote:
| Yes, if Charles Darwin would publish a book today, with a
| focus on a layman reader, and then give interviews, instead
| of publishing his findings in journals, I would be skeptical.
| hossbeast wrote:
| But he is publishing in journals. The article cites his
| papers.
| PopePompus wrote:
| Anytime you see an astronomy article in the popular press that
| sounds a bit flaky, you can bet Avi Loeb's name will appear in
| it.
| sidcool wrote:
| I have a strong belief that we will establish first contact by
| 2040.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Based on what?
| thesizeofa wrote:
| I suppose they need to drive traffic on "scientific"american by
| either flouting aliens, mysteries, or objects the size of several
| thousands football fields or washing machines.
|
| There is nothing alien about this space object other than its
| geological origin.
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